The little thing laughed; her father gave her a kiss; got up from the counter, and with the golden vision of endless doubling of capital before him, walked out of the shop.
CHAPTER IX.
What airs little Mary took; how Jane taunted and twitted her, how Rachel had to interfere; how even Mrs. Brown chose to comment on the startling fact of a new grocer's shop, and what predictions she made, we leave to the imagination of the reader.
We deal with the great day, or rather with the eve of the great day. It was come. Rachel, her mother, Mary, and Mr. Jones were all busy giving the shop its last finishing touch; on the next morning the Teapot was to open.
"Well, Miss Gray, 'tain't amiss, is it?" said Jones, looking around him with innocent satisfaction.
He was, as we have said before, a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, and to him the Teapot doubly owed its existence. He had painted the walls; he had fixed up the shelves in their places; the drawers and boxes his own hands had fashioned. We will not aver that a professional glazier and carpenter might not have done all this infinitely better than Richard Jones, but who could have worked so cheap or pleased Richard Jones so well? And thus with harmless pleasure he could look around him and repeat:
"Well, Miss Gray, 'tain't amiss, is it?"
"Amiss!" put in Mrs. Gray, before her daughter could speak, "I should think not. You're a clever man, Mr. Jones, to have done all that with your own hands, out of your own head."
Mr. Jones rubbed his forehead, and passed his hand through his stubby hair.
"Well, Ma'am, 'tain't amiss, though I say it that shouldn't, and though 'tain't much."